DH and I have been together for 13 years. For about the past 5 or 6 years he has been ok most of the time but will sometimes get into a bad mood with me for seemingly no reason. These moods are actually becoming more and more frequent, and I sometimes find myself getting a bit anxious when for example he is due home and I know he's in one of these moods, or when he's in one of those moods and I decide to cook something different for tea. That kind of thing.
These moods are always blamed on me. Today he is moody because he went to work feeling not 100% but wouldn't have a sick day and then on the drive home he phoned me and I told him that one of his dogs had been sick today in the kitchen and that I had cleaned it up but I'd need his help to move the washing machine and clean underneath it as I couldn't move it alone. Apparently I said it with a bad attitude and in a strange tone, hence he arrived home at 5pm in a terrible mood. When he's in these moods he's all over the kids and making a huge fuss of them, whereas normally he's not bothered with them at all.
I end up having to think all the time about how I come across and the tone I say things in otherwise he says I have an attitude problem and sulks. I also feel more and more like I have to try to please him to keep a quiet life, for example in terms of housework.
I have just cooked tea for us all and he literally finished his, left his plate on the table, pushed his chair back and got up, left the chair there and walked off into the other room so presumably he expects me to clean up tonight. He can sometimes be very nasty when he's in these moods, calling me names and deliberately being unpleasant with the things he says to me, then denying it.
Efforts to calmly talk to him about things also result in a bad mood because he says my attitude is bad or that I'm trying to argue when that's not the case. To put it in a nutshell as long as I do everything he says, when he says it and never expect him to do anything in the house and with the kids, he's fine.
I have had enough. My father was always like this with my mother, still is really, to the extent that she's never been allowed long hair in 45 years of marriage as my dad doesn't like long hair! So I am reluctant to continue in this slippery spiral of always trying to please DH. Just after he got home tonight I nipped to the local shop for bread. DH had requested french bread to go with tea but they didn't have any, so I got rolls, and I was actually feeling quite panicky and worried about what he'd say. He's kicked off about stock cubes before!